I am having problems trying to connect 2 FW cameras to a single (externally powered 3 port) PCMCIA card. The cameras are the FireWire DMK21AF04.AS and the DBK21AF04.AS models.

My Notebook does not have a native FW port. I use an externally powered, 3 port PCMCIA FW Card. One camera works fine on this set up. The Notebook computer is an IBM ThinkPad R40, Centrino 1.4Ghz, 512MB RAM running Win XP Pro SP3. I am using IC Capture 2.1. The AVi’s are being recorded to an external 7200rpm HDD. All my cables are 6 pin to 6 pin.

When I connect 1 camera it displays and operates correctly. As soon as I plug the 2nd camera into the FW PCMCIA card I loose the 1st camera and neither of the two devices shows up.

Am I expecting too much from a single PCMCIA card, even though it is externally powered by a 12V DC 1.0A regulated mains adapter and has 3 ports?

Thanks!

Dennis

Stefan Geissler

August 3, 2009, 11:02:33

Hello Dennis,

You do not expect too much from the PCMCIA Card. At least 4 cameras should work fine, if the frame is set to a low values. But connecting a second camera to the board should not kick out the first camera. Does the second camera work fine as single camera?

At least I can not exclude the Service Pack 3 from being the problem.

nardes

August 4, 2009, 02:24:26

Hello, Stefan

Thank you for your reply and support help.

I have 3 TIS cameras, DMK21AF04.AS, DMK31AF04.AS and DBK21AF04.AS and they all work individually with the (externally powered) PCMCIA card and IBM ThinkPad R40.

These cameras also work when connected individually to an external Belkin 6 port FW Hub (powered by an external 12V DC 1A mains adapter) but again, as soon as I connect the 2nd camera I loose the original one and I have to disconnect the 2nd camera to re-discover the 1st camera.

I have limited the tests so far to the DxK21 models only, with their 640x480 pixel chips. I should add that I already have the "FireWire Performance Manager" installed which always runs at start up.

Thanks!

Dennis

Stefan Geissler

August 4, 2009, 09:08:18

Hi Dennis,

I must admit, I run out of ideas. You may uninstall the SP 3, but this is guessing.

nardes

August 6, 2009, 02:57:31

Hello, Stefan

Okay – one of my original uncertainties was that I do not have any knowledge of Firewire, so I did not know if there was a fundamental technology limitation in terms of connecting only 1 camera to a PCMCIA card. I did not want to waste my time investigating and testing in this case.:-)

Now that you have said this should be possible, it gave me the confidence and motivation to continue with my investigation of this problem. I dug around in my computer and under Control Panel, Power Options, Advanced Settings I made the following change:

PCI BUS Power Management: default was set to “Automatic”
I changed this to “Disable” which require a reboot of the IBM ThinkPad R40. This appears to have fixed the problem.:clap:

As I write this, I have all 3 of my TIS camera connected and I can toggle between them in the “Device” drop down field of IC Capture 2.1, so that appears to have fixed the problem!:good:

Cheers

Dennis

PS – the Advanced Settings panel states that normally it is not necessary to change this setting and the user should not change the setting from “Automatic” to “Disable” unless the user has an in-depth knowledge of the computer and power management.

Stefan Geissler

August 6, 2009, 09:38:08

Dennis,

Thank you very much for your testing and your solution. I found these settings only in Windows Vista, but not in Windows XP and I did not knew about this before.